Jack Campbell, Jonathan Drouin among top NHL bounce-back candidates for 2023-24

Tyler Yaremchuk was joined by Frank Seravalli to discuss some bounce back candidates for the 2023-24 season on the latest episode of Daily Faceoff Live.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Let’s talk about some comeback players for this season. You had a chance to catch up with Connor Brown in Edmonton, Oilers fans have liked what they’ve seen in the preseason but take us through Connor Brown’s mindset and what people can learn in the feature you did.

Frank Seravalli: Yeah, it was great to spend a few minutes with him when I was in Edmonton last week. It has been a tough road for him, had surgery on that knee on November 1 and the rest of the year I’m sure it felt like he’s not even really an NHL player. He’ll see his team only occasionally when he’s at the rink, not travelling, just trying to rehab. He said to himself, if I’m going to be sitting here on my couch immobile for the next little while, what’s one way that I can get better?

And so what he did was he honed in on his nutrition and his diet, I have more information on that on the feature on Daily Faceoff. It was interesting to me to get a little insight of improving when he can’t improve on the ice. I think he’s one of the real comeback of the year candidates. There’s certainly some others, Max Pacioretty is going to be coming off of that Achilles injury. He’s not going to be back though until November or December so it’s going to be a while for a guy we last saw play back in 2021-22.

I’ve got a few more candidates to throw at you for comeback player of the year. Jonathan Drouin, Jack Campbell, Jakub Vrana, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson. Who are you most intrigued to see?

Tyler Yaremchuk: My pick is the guy at the top of the list, Jonathan Drouin. You think of all the things he’s gone through over the last couple of seasons in Montreal, taking time away from the sport at moments. He’s going to Colorado to reunite with his boy Nathan MacKinnon. That one has the most boom or bust potential of all of this. Max Pacioretty will come back and be a good NHL player, Oliver Ekman-Larsson will get into the lineup and he should stay in the lineup but with Drouin I could see him scoring 20 goals this year, he could also be on waivers November 1.

You can watch the rest of the episode here: